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Allied Health Professions Research and Development Action Plan
PREFACE
by the Chief Scientist
Allied health professionals provide an immense amount of direct patient and client care in NHSScotland and other service organisations. The care they provide is supported by long-standing research activity in a range of specialty areas.
AHP research is a vital resource in meeting the needs of patients, service users and service providers and is an important component of the national strategy for the health services. Much of the best research is the result of teams of professionals contributing as partners in innovative research programmes. This is a model which parallels the working pattern of AHPs, who are well used to teamwork.
The Chief Scientist Office (CSO) has been, and will continue to be, an active supporter of AHP research, as its practical benefits are not hard to find. There are many examples of superlative research carried out by AHPs in Scotland within individual specialties and as part of multi-professional and multi-sectoral teams. And we want to see even more in the future, throughout the allied health professions.
To achieve this, we need to see research activity growing in all the professions and in all the academic units that support them. We need to see more AHPs becoming involved in research, building their research expertise and leadership potential. We need to see growing numbers of research-active staff in our academic institutions and more AHPs at senior lecturer, reader and professorial level. And we need to see a more equitable distribution of PhD students across the professions, backed by strong leadership.
We need these developments to ensure that patients and service users accessing health and social care services in all sectors now, and in the future, can benefit from the delivery of evidence-based interventions from AHPs.
So what is required? Improved strategic focus, greater selectivity to improve rigour and quality, investment in research capacity at experienced research leadership level, and increased inter-departmental, inter-disciplinary, national and international collaborations to increase the scale, relevance, applicability and eventual impact of the research - all these will be necessary. There also needs to be increased involvement of service providers and service users in planning, delivering and evaluating research, and the development of innovative employment packages that allow AHPs to develop their research expertise and productivity while retaining a brief for caring for patients and service users in practice settings.
It's a long list, but this action plan for research and development in the allied health professions in Scotland is designed to begin the process of change. That means change for the better, inspiring greater and more focused research activity across the professions and driving more evidence-based interventions with patients and service users.
The action plan will not be achieved overnight, but will be delivered over time. I look forward with confidence to seeing the allied health professions develop their capacity to play a full and active role as leaders of research programmes that support their vital services to patients and service users.
Professor Roland Jung
Chief Scientist, Scottish Executive Health Department
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